Digital Playground Is Coming Soon To Your TV Set

One of the things I have always admired about Digital Playground is that the companies owner, Joone, is not afraid to leverage technology.  Say what you want but when everyone else was crowing that they were shooting in HD (2 mega pixels) Digital Playground was shooting with the Red 1 cameras at 16 megapixels.

A few weeks ago Digital Playground announced that it was going to be launching it’s own cable TV channel.

Joone was kind enough to answer some questions for me about this.

The channel will be a Pay per view outlet, not a subscription based service and it will be available on pretty much all of the cable TV outlets like Comcast, Versizon Fios, AT&T Uverse, COX  and Time Warner. When I asked if it would also be on satellite I was told that hasn’t been announced yet.

The service will begin offering only Digital Playground titles but in the future, the plans are to license other titles, as long as they comply with Digital Playgrounds strict quality and content standards.

There will be different versions for different carriers as well so if hardcore isn’t acceptable in your area, softer versions will be available. Joone emphasizes that the carrier will choose how hard the version they will offer is, they will also choose whether they carry the standard definition version or the high definition version..

When asked if direct delivery was likely to supplant the old go to the video store model Joone replied, ” I think in this day and age its not about a single format its about giving the consumer options. Some want DVD, some want Blu-ray some want online and some want VOD to their bedroom tv.”

The content will be exclusive, no other VOD (Video On Demand) Branded system will offer it. The release schedule  will follow the Hollywood style of window releasing. Our theatrical has been DVD and Blu-ray and after that window we go into VOD. We want to maximize each window release.

I asked Joone what was the most difficult aspect of bringing this to fruition. “Making blockbuster movies that make money and creating a high end library. At the end of the day the deal was an easy one because we had the right content” was his answer.

Finally I inquired as to what is next for Digital Playground.

“We have our own toy line that we have been working on for the past year lunching in Jan. We did a sneak peek at the Berlin show to a very select group of big distributors and they where blown away by what we have. Whats exciting for me is that these toy buyers see hundreds of toys each week and they really love what we have coming out.

You know what is interesting is for years the Berlin show was about DVDs. This last show I went to it was all about Toys,  and Toys you can not download so there is going to be a need for distributors and stores.”